Valorant Guide

28 Feb 21

Guides

Vekm

Essential Knowledge For All VALORANT Players - A Guide Made By The Community

A Valorant guide made with input from community members over at r/Valorant!

People often say that a thousand minds are better than one, which is something I agree with. Whenever I share my articles or guides, I always get good criticism and reflections on my work. So, I thought it would be a fun idea to ask reddit.com/r/valorant for tips and advice that they wish their teammates knew before the game began. I will expand on the tips they give and try to explain why they're important. The theme of this article is what would be the one tip or piece of advice you would want to give your teammates before your game started.

Knowing When to Play Defensive

I wish they knew how to play time in post plant and not throw.

- u/prestocito

You don’t have to rush/challenge gunfights on defense.

- u/drewjifilm

This seems to be a huge issue especially in lower ranks. Many players seem to either roam too much or try going for kills once the spike has been planted. What ‘play time’ usually means is to just let the enemy waste time or trying to stall by slowing enemies or putting up barriers or smoke, so they have to play slow. There is no reason to be roaming when you are defending the spike. The less time the enemy has, the more aggressive they will have to play and possibly make more mistakes. Just imagine how stressed you get and how aggressive you start playing when you have little time to defuse the spike. In many of my guides, I also explained the importance of playing more passive in defense rounds. These are rounds where you do not need to take much risk. Let the enemy do the peeking. The less time they have to plant, the more aggressive they will be forced to play. All you need to do on defense rounds is gather information and give callouts to your teammates. Always remember when you are defending you do not have to play aggressive or do risky plays/peeks. Leave that to the enemy!

Be on the Same Page

Buy with your team.

- u/eRazer101

I wish my teammates knew how to buy together. What I mean by this is that the team should either save together or buy together.

- u/ArchetypeAir

This was a common suggestion from Reddit users. It is better to buy with your team, it does not make sense when half of the team saves and the other half full buys. For example, if on Round 8, three members of your team save while the other two full buy and you lose that round, the members who full bought will have to save and the members who saved will want to full buy. This means as a team you never full bought, putting your team at a disadvantage. So always either full buy as a team or full save; it’s the safest option.

Positive Mindset

Your mental game trumps literally anything else. In low to mid elo, your performance varies +/- 50% based on your attitude towards the game. Even if you have every reason to be mad at a teammate for throwing, you only hurt yourself by being verbally upset.

- u/just-for-rVAL

This is heavily dependent on rank; however, all ranks need to come into the game with a positive attitude about winning the game it helps so much.

- u/jmantechno

I know there are thousands of guides on why you should not be toxic, so I am not going tell you what you already know. However, I will remind you that by being toxic or going into a game with a negative attitude, it will negatively impact your teammates and they may play badly or maybe not play at all. Try to be as positive as you can or simply mute yourself when you are about to say something negative. You can still give your teammates tips on what they should have done, but again this can be done nicely. You could say “Nice try, but I probably would have done this." It is never a good idea to backseat game as they are trying to clutch or win a round. A countless amount of research has been done proving that being toxic in a game causes everyone’s performance to be worse. A player should always focus on themselves and how they could do better. At the end of the day, you can’t change the random people you play with by being toxic. However, you can change how you play and improve.

Defaulting

Defaulting is a common strategy originating from CS GO, that's still prevalent in mid to high elo Valorant. Basically, attackers will spread out across the various "lanes" of the map, trying to get info on the enemy set-up, waste enemy abilities, and potentially grabbing a pick to convert into a bombsite take. At low ELO, most people don't know about defaulting. In mid ELO, people tend to be slow to execute a site after a pick is grabbed or when there's enough info to know that one site might be weak.

- u/Kingxvx

In all honesty, I have never heard of defaulting but, then again, I did not play much CS:GO. U/Kingxvx does a good job at explaining. The main idea of defaulting is baiting abilities and giving as much information as you can to your team. Many of us probably do this without really knowing the name. Sometimes people fake push sites to force enemies to use abilities or see which agents are there. If you notice that all the fraggers are on site A, you may want to go to site B, or if the person with the Op is holding B, you may want to go A. It is never a good idea to 5 man onto a site or rush a site hoping you will get an easy plant. Most of the time half your team will die, and you will be forced to retreat and now the enemy knows your whole team’s position and what abilities everyone used.

Communication

Having good communication with your teammates is a very important aspect of play that many Reddit users mentioned. Many players wanted to be able to communicate with their teammates and get callouts. It is hard reading chat for callouts, and it is even harder to type mid game in chat to give a call out. By talking to your team, you can let them know what abilities you have up, where you smoked, and your cooldown on abilities. An important aspect of good team communication is that people are less likely to get toxic when they can talk to their teammates, since everyone is on the same page. It also allows players to communicate why they did certain plays and their train of thought. Some people might get toxic during the game because they don’t understand why their teammate did a certain play, by communication your moves you are helping your teammates understand your actions. Through experience, I’ve seen that some people are just overall less likely to be rude or toxic speaking voice to voice instead of using the text chat.

These are some of the important things Reddit users wish their teammates knew in ranked play. It made me realize that many people have good intentions and want to help their teammates improve and get better and get frustrated when they can’t. People don’t point out your mistakes to be rude or anything but mostly to help you improve and win the game. It is a team game, so every player is important. Just remember when giving tips to do it nicely and when receiving criticism do not take it personally.

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